Monday, June 25, 2012

Will U.S. Media Ever Admit Al Gore Was Right About Global Warming?

By MARC MCDONALD

If any public leader in U.S. history has ever been vindicated on the biggest issue of the era, it'd have to be Al Gore. He has been repeatedly vindicated on global warming. But millions of Americans remain unaware of this. And the corporate U.S. MSM seems reluctant to give him credit.

It's not the first time Gore has been vindicated. After all, he was an early champion of the Internet, long before anyone else in Congress was even aware of its possibilities.

But instead of giving Gore some credit, the MSM took the GOP's bait and ran with the false story that Gore had supposedly arrogantly claimed to have "invented the Internet." What should have been a big positive for Gore in the 2000 race quickly turned into a negative.

In his 2004 book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Al Franken wrote about how the so-called "liberal" media gave Gore a raw deal in the 2000 presidential campaign. The MSM's coverage was much more positive about Bush than Gore (this, according to a comprehensive study by the respected Pew Charitable Trusts).

As Franken wrote, during the 2000 campaign, "the media just hated Al Gore."

"Somewhere along the line, the pack decided that Al Gore was a sanctimonious, graspy exaggerator running against a likeable if dim-witted goof-off."

Gore must feel like Rodney Dangerfield. Amazingly, to this day, Gore gets no respect. The U.S. mainstream media has yet to give Gore proper credit for being right all along about global warming, another issue he embraced early on.

Consider this: back in 1997 Gore helped broker the Kyoto Protocol, which was aimed at fighting global warming. (Of course, the Bush administration later withdrew from the treaty).

Since 2000, nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred, according to NASA. (Note that the modern record-keeping era dates back to the 1880s).

Consider this: what if during those years, the world had experienced normal or cooler-than-average temperatures? What do you think the GOP and Rush would have done with that?

They would have had a field day.

We would have constantly heard about "Al Gore the Fraud" each and every day. I have no doubt that the Great GOP Propaganda Noise Machine would have hammered this message home constantly. And sooner or later, the corporate media would have taken the bait (just as they did with the bogus "I invented the Internet story").

But no: as it turns out, instead, 2000-2010 was the warmest decade in the modern era. And what do we hear from the GOP (or, for that matter, from the corporate MSM?) Nothing.

It just goes to show you how completely the Rich & Powerful and the Corporations control the flow of information in this country.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

re:>>But no: as it turns out,>>instead, 2000-2010 was the>>warmest decade in the modern era.

I was arguing with a right-winger about global warming and I mentioned this statistic and he flatly denied it. In fact, a number of right-wingers I've talked continue to deny that the earth is even warming at all, much less that it's a problem.Statistics, numbers and facts mean nothing to these people.By contrast, in my travels in Europe and Asia, I've yet to meet anyone who disputes global warming. In Taiwan, for example, I found that Al Gore's books are widely read and that he's highly respected.

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About This Blog

Welcome to BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, the progressive political blog of Marc McDonald. A Texas journalist, McDonald worked for 15 years for several newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, before he quit his day job and set up shop in cyberspace in 1995. McDonald's articles have appeared in a number of popular progressive Web sites, including Crooks and Liars, The Reaction, Buzzflash.com, Salon.com, OpEdNews.com, The Neil Rogers Show and The Raw Story. McDonald's Web articles have also been featured and reviewed by various national and international media, including CNN Headline News, the BBC, CBS, the Washington Post, USA Today and many more. On June 3, 2011, I was interviewed on the progressive radio program, "Voices at Work." Go here to hear my interview with host Ron Gonyea. I am always available for media interviews on progressive issues. Contact me here.